In the first years of his mayoralty, Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb liked to draw a highway on the blackboard. Look, he would say to the students, a first or second class at a secondary school with many children with a migration background. This highway is the Netherlands. Then he drew an insertion strip on the right. We’ll merge, he would say. You have to look carefully, don’t drive too fast and then make sure you go with the flow without any problems.
Ahmed Aboutaleb has been mayor of Rotterdam for fifteen years, this week he announced his departure. He will retire this fall. Born in Morocco, he came to the Netherlands at the age of fifteen, merged perfectly into the highway called the Netherlands and eventually became mayor for all Rotterdam residents. At least, that’s how he likes to see it. But has he always gone with the flow? And what did the Rotterdammers themselves think of it?
Teacher Halil Karaaslan (35), who told the anecdote about the highway, has mixed feelings about Aboutaleb. He sees the mayor as a father with whom you occasionally clash, who may not be cool but for whom you also have a lot of respect. “It is your father.” He stood at the back of the classroom when Aboutaleb drew the highway and thought about what he taught his students as a young social studies teacher: ‘you have the same rights, duties and opportunities as everyone else’.
Typical first generation migrant
Rotterdammers with a migration background from Karaslan’s generation and younger find merging onto the highway hopelessly old-fashioned. They are driving in the left lane. Catch up. Occasionally get fined. They think Ahmed Aboutaleb is a typical first-generation migrant, says Karaaslan. A man who wants to adapt as much as possible to the migration country and is grateful for the opportunities he gets.
That was his message, especially in the first years of his mayoralty. Those who don’t adapt, fuck off. He quit after the attacks Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2011. And also earlier, after the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam in 2004 – he was an alderman in Amsterdam at the time.
Dutch people with a migration background sometimes feel put in a corner when he addresses them directly. For example, when he said that “the Muslim community” had to distance itself from Islamic extremism. What do they have to do with that? And the time he confronted the Turkish community about their role in violent protests when a Turkish minister arrived in the Netherlands and knew she was not welcome. Aboutaleb had her deported with a heavily armed arrest team. White Rotterdammers really appreciated these strong actions.
Jan Struijs, former chairman of the Dutch Police Union, sees himself as being strict with anyone who colored outside the lines of the law, regardless of background. “Safety is his number 1.” Not surprising in a city like Rotterdam, which when he took office as mayor was still at the top of lists that you don’t want to be on.
Patser checks
Under his leadership, Rotterdam grew into a city with ‘police checks’, where drivers of expensive cars are pulled over and checked, experimental camera surveillance and city marines. He became a law-and-order man, says police chief Frank Paauw, who worked closely with him for nine years. Aboutaleb had just become mayor when he was confronted with violent riots at a Sunset Grooves beach party in Hoek van Holland in the summer of 2009. People fought with each other and attacked the police. Officers were forced to shoot. 19-year-old Robby van der Leeden died. That was Aboutaleb’s baptism by fire. Paauw, who took office in Rotterdam shortly after the riots: “Since then, he has always been on the call when it comes to safety. I never actually saw him slack off.”
So safety comes first at Aboutaleb, then perhaps fun. When it comes to nuisance from the catering industry, he gave the people who complained a big platform, says catering entrepreneur and former chairman of the Royal Horeca Netherlands Robèr Willemsen. “And when his official car drove by, we had enforcement visit half an hour later to look at patio dimensions.” At least that’s what he thought.
Aboutaleb does not understand that catering can also be fun, he says. It must also have been Aboutaleb’s Hoek van Holland trauma, Willemsen thinks. Thys Boer of the N8W8 Rotterdam foundation, an advisory council for better nightlife, also talks about the beach riots as a formative event for Aboutaleb. Since he took office in 2009, many bars and clubs have disappeared, says Boer. And Aboutaleb was not there when the sector was having a hard time, he believes. During corona, for example. “He was not curious about it and had little understanding of the cultural function of clubs. Nightlife is much more than a beer at the bar.”
Gabriel Gomes Barros (24) also does not find the city that Aboutaleb leaves behind very pleasant, he says. Together with the mayor he traveled to Edinburgh for a conference. Gomes Barros was there as a member of the Rotterdam youth council. “Then you see that he is quite popular. Everyone wants to take a picture with him.” Respectful, charismatic and interested, is how Barros characterizes the mayor.
Barros does have the feeling that Aboutaleb has hardened somewhat after fifteen years. In particular, he disagreed with the mayor when he made decisions as head of the triangle (mayor, chief of police, chief public prosecutor). Gomes Barros was at the residential protest on the Erasmus Bridge in 2021, where the triangle decided to intervene hard and break up the protest. And with the racist messages in police app groups, he thought that Mayor Aboutaleb was not strict enough with the police.
If you ask people in his neighborhood, Rotterdam-West, whether they trust the police, you hear ‘no’ more often than ‘yes’. People are suspicious, says Gomes Barros. Boys of color always wonder why they are pushed aside, why they are spoken to. “If you don’t take action with those app groups, you confirm the idea among those suspicious people that the police are racist.”
Not popular
The Feyenoord supporters were also not disappointed with him, says Kees Lau of the supporters’ association. “He is not popular. I don’t think he’s much into football. He has nothing to do with the social side of it and nothing with the sporting side. He saw it as a safety issue.”
But Cor de Geus, chairman of the playground in Hillesluis, says: “I’m going to miss that guy.” He does hope that Aboutaleb’s successor will pay more attention to the well-being of young people and be less afraid of the nuisance they may cause. De Geus has always advocated community centers. Whenever he saw Aboutaleb, he started talking about it. Almost every neighborhood meeting Aboutaleb attended, especially the first years. He saw those clubhouses close, and saw young people wandering around the streets with their “soul under their arm.”
Aboutaleb always started talking about alcohol. He is afraid that it will become noisy, that the young people will drink and get drunk, says De Geus. And then you could stand on your head, says the man from Hillesluis, or jump on the table, nothing changed in his opinion. “Yesterday afternoon we found twenty-five bottles of laughing gas in the neighborhood.” Yes, that is certainly nice and healthy, De Geus thinks.
Before Aboutaleb started his third term in office, he promised to listen better and accept criticism more flexibly. But the mayor can still be intimidating in the council, especially if he feels like he is being personally attacked. Living councilor Ingrid Coenradie thinks that he does not always realize the effect it has on others when he says or emails something as mayor. “He then finds it difficult to say: ‘Oh, not that useful, I will do it differently next time’.”
Cuddly toys
And yet, Rotterdam residents do find it reasonably easy to approach the mayor. Chief of Police Paauw says what many Rotterdammers also say: Aboutaleb does not stay in the city hall but moves into the neighborhoods. After serious events such as recently when a student shot dead a mother, her daughter and a GP, Aboutaleb was there to talk to sad and shocked local residents, put his arm around shoulders and handed out hugs.
And he often ‘just’ speaks to local residents to hear what is going on, what they think of their neighborhood, what the bottlenecks and annoyances are. That is greatly appreciated.
When the gym of Paul van Dorst, chairman of the LGBTI+ fan club De Roze Kameraden, was defaced with homophobic slogans and a fire was set because people did not agree with the establishment of the LGBTI+ supporters club, Aboutaleb called him from his holiday address . Van Dorst really liked that.
The mayor does not shy away from calling people to account for their responsibility, says Paauw. He tells about a meeting in the Afrikaanderwijk that ran late. At eight o’clock in the evening there were children running around. Paauw: “Then he says: whose children are those? Madam, sir, are those children yours? They have to go home and go to bed. If this is what they learn, they will soon be hanging outside at night and bothering people. Raise them!”
Cor de Geus remembers a walk with Aboutaleb. The mayor saw garbage in a front yard. “He just rang the doorbell. ‘Oh, that’s not possible,’ he would say.” And the funny thing is, everyone accepted it from him, says De Geus.
He has been cutting cake here, says Amina Hussen, who supports women who live in poverty or face other problems with her project Power Women in the Old West. Aboutaleb has an eye for what he calls ‘silent forces’. People who help others without too much fuss. “I feel seen,” she says. Aboutaleb finds them accessible and human. “If I have a woman here who is in a very difficult situation that I cannot solve myself, I email the mayor. He almost always responds himself and very quickly.”
He also addressed colleagues in the mayor and aldermen about their responsibility. Outgoing Minister of the Interior Hugo de Jonge (CDA) was an alderman in Rotterdam for seven and a half years. Aboutaleb can be strict, he says, he has a straight back. But also a very big heart. And he leaves nothing to chance. “I was responsible for the homeless as a health care councilor. If he came across a homeless person and he had the feeling that things were not going well, he would hang up the line.”